Caitlin Clark’s Move to Help College Basketball Star Revealed

Indiana Fever guard and WNBA Rookie of the Year Caitlin Clark has helped transcend the popularity of the WNBA to levels it has never seen before, and just one year into her career, she is one of the faces of the league.
However, her fame and popularity aren’t new by any means, as Clark burst onto the scene during her college career with the Iowa Hawkeyes.

The final game of her career, which happened to be a loss to the South Carolina Gamecocks in the championship, averaged a record 18.9 million viewers.
While Clark is no longer in the college ranks, there are still stars who will follow in her footsteps and headline the sport. One of the most notable is USC Trojans sophomore guard JuJu Watkins. The then-freshman trailed only Clark in scoring and led the Trojans to the program’s first No. 1 seed since the 80s.

With Watkins being viewed as one of the players who will carry Clark’s torch, USC head coach Lindsay Gottlieb revealed in an interview with NBC that she asked Clark for advice on behalf of Watkins for navigating being a superstar at the college level. To the surprise of Gottlieb, Clark took it upon herself to help Watkins out, giving her the USC coach her phone number so she could help guide Watkins.

“First of all, she’s [Caitlin Clark] so gracious,” Gottlieb said. “She literally took my phone and said, ‘Here’s my number. Reach out, call me, see how I can help.’ But essentially she said that I had that attention for like a year and a half. JuJu is going to have it for three years.”
For Watkins, having someone like Clark on her side to help guide her through the fame and attention she will experience is a major resource. It also shows that Clark, who may not have had someone with a similar experience to lean on, will do whatever it takes to help the sport’s next stars.
The Trojans will have plenty of eyes on them this season, as ESPN has them ranked as the No. 3 team in the country in their early Top 25 rankings.